Three young women wake up, confused and terrified, in a room that looks like a cross between a normal hospital room and the creepy underground lair of some mad scientist from a horror movie. A video screen flickers on and a creepy older man, looking a bit like Academy-award-nominee Robert Loggia, appears on it, telling the women that he’s their “jailer.” The women, you see, had all been getting abortions when their jailer’s shadowy accomplices kidnapped them and brought them to this strange prison, where they will be forced to live for the next seven months until they gave birth. “You were all on the operating table, all ready to commit murder,” announces a mysterious doctor. “Your babies will be given life just as God planned.”
This is the premise of a new horror film called The Life Zone, which recently had its world premiere at the prestigious, er, Hoboken International Film Festival, a festival that was, perhaps not coincidentally, founded and chaired by the film’s writer and producer, Kenneth del Vecchio. In case you think I’m making all this up, here’s the film’s trailer, which makes The Life Zone look a bit like an equal-parts mixture of Saw, Human Centipede, and The Handmaid’s Tale, with Robert Loggia in the role of Jigsaw/Dr. Heiter/The Commander:
Now, if you thought that something seemed really … off about that trailer, well, you’re not alone. For the film is not, as you might have assumed from my description, a warning against the fanatical misogyny of many in the anti-abortion movement.
No, the film – produced by a pro-life former judge, crime thriller author, and Republican New Jersey state senate candidate – is meant as pro-life propaganda. As the offical press release for the film’s premiere put it:
The film, which appears to cut right down the middle [of the abortion debate], examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist. Del Vecchio and the cast invite pro-lifers to come to this historic event.
During the months the three women are held in captivity, you see, they are exposed to a barrage of films and books intended to, er, educate them about abortion –what their attending obstetrician Dr. Wise describes as “an abortion think tank.” Two of the captive women do indeed convert to the pro-life side; apparently we in the audience are supposed to develop Stockholm Syndrome along with them. The third, as we see in the trailer, tries to induce a miscarriage, which doesn’t go quite as planned.
And this sets us up for the final twist, which I’m just going to go ahead and reveal: once all three women have given birth, Dr. Wise tells them she’s going to sew them all, mouth-to-vagina, into a Human Abortion-pede!
Actually no: the twist is that the “life zone” the three women in has actually been … purgatory! All three “captives,” you see, had died on the operating table while getting their abortions. (Apparently they went to the world’s worst abortion clinic, as first-trimester abortions don’t involve anything more surgically invasive than the insertion of a suction tube; the risk of death from a legal surgical abortion is 0.0006%, one in 160,000 cases, making the procedure many times safer than childbirth itself.) Their time in the “life zone” was a test: the two women who changed their minds were whisked up to heaven, while their miscarriage-attempting, stubbornly pro-choice companion is sent straight to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. Dr. Wise, despite being on the right side of the abortion question, also goes to hell for committing suicide. And, oh yeah, their jailer – Loggia – was Satan. Why Satan and a hell-bound doctor were the ones trying to convert the abortion ladies to the pro-life side I can’t tell you; del Vecchio’s theology is evidently more sophisticated than I am.
The real twist here? As Jersey Journal writer Alan Robb notes:
The Life Zone went viral across the internet [last] Friday after blogs The Frisky and Talking Points Memo picked up on the film’s trailer. … But despite garnering more than 20,000 hits on YouTube in the last four days, only fifty people – including the film’s cast and producers – attended this weekend’s screening, and even those who starred in the movie didn’t know how to interpret its twist ending.
It’s impossible to tell from the trailer if the film is bad in a so-bad-it’s-good way, or if it’s just plain awful. I will try to get hold of it when it hits video, and will report back with my results.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good horror film set in a creepy hospital, try renting Infection, a Japanese film from 2005. Or, if you’ve got a longer attention span, try Lars Von Trier’s supernatural soap opera The Kingdom, a darkly comic miniseries which takes place in what one might call, paraphrasing Bill Murray’s character in Tootsie, “one nutty hospital.” Both are conveniently available on Netflix instant watch, so you don’t even have to leave your pregnancy dungeon to see them.
EDITED: Added some info on the minimal dangers of abortion procedures.
And I think there needs to be room for mistakes to be rectified.
He can freeze his little wigglers if he wants to maintain the possibility of future children.
Regarding paper abortions-the thing that I think about is the man who truly deep down would love to have the child and would take 100% responsibility of raising the kid financially and emotionally without asking for a single thing from the mother…she still has an absolute right to abort if she wants to. It is her body and her decision ultimately because…again, her body.
So if he has to accept her decision to abort, I can see why the concept of paper abortions at least tries to give the man a similar right as the woman in the scenario that wants an abortion the man does not want.
But as Lady V and others have said, there is a baby if she decides to not abort. Unless there is a lot more social support for mothers…that baby needs to be supported.
But aren’t there MRA types who complain when their girlfriends/wives/whoever get abortions? That they’re being deprived of fatherhood? I remembered reading about one such dipfuck in New Mexico. There’s the Feministe story of it, as the original local paper one is in the archives behind a sign-up wall. http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/05/17/just-totally-normal-pro-life-things/
Not to mention all those protestors who hold up the “Men Regret Lost Fatherhood” signs.
filet, I’ve been meaning to write about that dude; I think what’s holding me back is that I just get depressed thinking about it.
If you think there are no atheists who believe in God, you’ve never heard of S. E. Cupp.
Let me explain these concepts for the four millionth time:
-conception-egg provider and sperm provider have (or should have) equal rights and responsibilities. See the court rulings on the legal status of non-implanted embryos for more on this-both progenitors have a right to their own gametes and an equal right over non-implanted embryos.
-pregnancy-the pregnant person, whose body and life are burdened by the pregnancy, has rights over the pregnancy. This is true regardless of whether or not the pregnant person is the egg provider-surrogates have the sole right to abort, under the law, and ethically. The surrogacy case is the closest we have to a real life “artificial womb” scenario-neither the egg provider nor sperm provider has the right to abort, because neither is pregnant
-after birth-egg provider and sperm provider have (or should have) equal rights and responsibilities. This includes egg providers who do not want the baby, as well as sperm providers who do not want the baby.
The egg provider has no more rights to abort per se than the sperm provider, it just happens (due to biology) that the egg provider is often the pregnant person and as such has the rights of any pregnant person (or any person) in regards to preserving their own bodily autonomy.
On the notion of fetus as a person, ethically, that should not prohibit abortion rights either (see here for more on that argument http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm)
On war-when women (both cis and trans), trans men, non-binary folks, and all other non men are exempt from paying taxes that go to war or the military, and exempt from having wars and military actions take place in locations where they work, live, raise their kids, and have their communities-then you can get back to me about war, MRAL, and we can discuss non-cis men soldiers who elect to fight in your unfunded desert battle arena that uses none of my taxes and kills no one who isn’t a fellow arena fighter.
But you miss the point, it is not that men, or other non-pregnant people are barred from having emotions or opinions about the pregnant person’s pregnancy, it is that they have no right to use the law, force, etc. to deny the pregnant person the ability to exercise their bodily autonomy. For example, a few years back my cousin got a really ugly tattoo. I thought getting it was a rather bad idea (not because I hate tattoos in general-the one he wanted was ugly) and I thought his choice of artist was poor (this person had a reputation for botching work and for not taking proper sanitary precautions). So, I did think he shouldn’t do it, but what I did not do was try to force him, blackmail him, or legally deny him the right to get the tattoo. Because, it is his body and he can do with it whatever he likes-regardless of what I may think. When it comes to issues of bodily autonomy, everyone has more say and more interest over their own body than anyone else does, so pregnant people should have more say and more interest over their abortions, or lack thereof, than anyone else.
@posterformerly; but the paper abortions as espoused by our guy here is specifically in the opposite situation – the woman is going to have the child, but the guy who donated his sperm doesn’t want it to impact his lifestyle.
Seems like you can’t win with the MRA guys. Almost like they have a problem with something else, if only I could figure out what it is….. oh yeah, women having autonomy.
Correction: “all other non-men” should be “any other non-men who are not a part of one of the former groups”, the former makes it sound as if the list is of non-men, when it isn’t, as it included trans men.
You know, following along with MRAL has actually helped me out a great deal. Re: abortion, here’s my thoughts on the matter:
The situation is inherently unbalanced: women must actually bring children to term, whereas men cannot. If a woman decides she does not want to have a child, and since before some fuzzy boundary the fetus is not a child, the man really doesn’t have a say in the matter. If the woman wants to bear the child, and the man does not, its a little bit late to do much about that since once the child is born, both become parents, and it really should be the woman’s choice whether to trying to bring the child to term. So for men who don’t want to be parents, contraception contraception contraception. (This should be standard anyway, since abortions are no cakewalk. Even morning after pills have some really annoying side effects.)
I still kinda feel like “paper abortions” (eugh…) should be possible, if both parties agree, for the same reason that putting a child up for adoption exists. It isn’t great for the child, but sometimes it may be the best solution (perhaps a religious woman who is absolutely convinced she must bear the child after contraception fails). But focusing on that is kinda missing the point, which is this: if you don’t want children, use contraception. I don’t see why, in all the conversation about how women are forcing men to pay childhood, why MRAL never once mentioned that the man could have used a condom.
Well, I’m still open to thoughts on the matter, so feel free to criticize if something doesn’t make sense. Back to the daily feminist
and of course that was supposed to be “child support”, not “childhood.” No edit button makes me a sad kirby….
Zombie-again, it is a weird thing for me…if she wants to abort and he does not want her to, he has no say in the matter. So why should she be able to insist he pay for something he said he did not want?
However, there is a baby in that situation which makes it not so simple.
Thank you Zombie, that was such an obvious solution that I feel rather foolish for not thinking of it. For me vasectomy was the best solution as I never wanted children and had a degree of certainty that I never wood that made it the best option. I was just thinking of men who were not so certain, but I was missing the obvious choice there.
One problem, Kirby, is that a good deal of child support enforcement involves the government attempting to recoup welfare and other low-income assistance payments. The “paper abortion,” even if both sides agreed to it, would allow much more gaming of the system–the mother could receive government assistance for the child while the father could escape any responsibility for pitching in. Also, even a paper abortion with the consent of the mother would be open to all manner of abuse and intimidation of the mother by the father (“sign the papers or else, b*tch” or even just “maybe he’ll stay with me if I sign”).
I’m just not comfortable with either parent permanently signing away the child’s right to receive support. If the parents wish to agree that there will be no child support, then the custodial parent is free to simply not seek a support order, which would then leave the option open should the custodial parent have a change of heart at a later date.
@Captain Bathrobe:
I meant more of something where both parents would agree (or else it couldn’t happen). I would agree that something like what MRAL was suggesting, one party signing away all ownership without any input from the other, wouldn’t work at all. I do understand your point about intimidation, but that sort of thing can occur in nearly any situation. You could say that the man could try to bully the woman into not seeking child support. Apparently there are things called parental waivers, which are basically what I was after, but I don’t know the stats on abuse of them.
Yeah, .Elizabeth, the presence of the baby is really the sticking point here. Child support is, in the final analysis, support for the child, not the parent. If we give the non-consenting parent the right to opt out of supporting the baby, then we would have to accept the responsibility of the state to provide for the child–without hope of recouping any costs from the non-consenting parent–should the mother be unable to do so. Personally, being a big-government, social welfare liberal, I don’t have a problem with this, but I imagine those on the “pro-life” side would find this arrangement highly objectionable.
Of course, the worst of our MRA pals would see not only the woman’s right to choose taken away, but also the elimination of child support and dismantling of the pitiful remnants the U.S. social welfare system–because fuck everyone else, that’s why.
What the hell? Speaking from personal experience, you’re awake the entire time, they put a little tube into you and suck it out. It’s totally safe! They give you instructions on how to care for yourself afterward and that’s that. Most women are able to go back to work that same day. That said, it can be pretty painful, but it only lasts five minutes. When I saw that trailer, it scared the shit out of me because, knowing the reasons I had my abortion, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have been forced to carry it to term (in which case, it would have been born this July). But the three women all fucking died? And the one young woman so desperate after living in that creepy hospital for five months is somehow totally a terrible person for making one last desperate move? I mean, hey, I really don’t like the idea of a pregnancy being aborted when the child could actually be born as a premie, but if there was one thing that would be likely to change, it would be something like that.
@ MRAL (looks who’s back after barely even a week),
I really don’t know where you and others like you get this idea that women take abortions lightly. First of all, an abortion clinic isn’t available in every area (I had to travel four hours)p; secondly, it costs money in North America; third, the procedure is painful; fourth, there’s always the worry of anti-choice protesters; fifth, the places can be difficult to find for exactly that reason; sixth, you have to worry about who it’s safe to tell and wonder what their reactions will be; and last but certainly not least, yes, there’s the wonder “Am I sure I want to do this? Am I sure I have to do this?” Especially for me, since I do want kids some day, I had to consider a lot. But I made the decision right for me and I have no regrets.
Again, Kirby, the right to support is the child’s, not the parents’. I just don’t think parents should be permanently signing that right away. No one knows just how expensive and all-consuming parenthood is until they try it, so a first-time mother signing away her rights before she’s even given birth wouldn’t exactly meet the definition of informed consent. A much better solution would be for the custodial parent to agree to not seek support–revocable at any time should circumstances or minds change.
Of course, if the custodial parent applies for government assistance, then all bets are off. This is why talk of a “paper abortion” is largely a moot point. There is no way the state is going to relinquish its right to recoup the expense of supporting a child. This is why the most vigorous enforcement of child support comes when the government is trying to recoup welfare costs.
As for intimidation, yes, it happens in child support cases as well. However, it’s much easier to intimidate someone into signing a piece of paper once than it is to consistently intimidate someone to refrain from asking for child support over a period of years.
I don’t doubt your good intentions here, but I think that, in practice, such a waiver would be a public policy disaster.
I love how women prattle on about abortion, probably the closest you ever get to an abstract thought.
Heres a little hint for ya, it’s not your life to give or take. Someone actually had the stones to write in stats on why women get abortions. Like not financially ready. As if thats a reason to kill. Gee I don’t feel like working. I guess I’ll just wack someone out and take their money, since I’m not financially ready to support myself. Whats the difference? None.
Someone else wrote about how first trimester abortion are so safe, with a like mere 0.0006% chance of the mother dying. Well hallelujah! Of course on the flip side theres about a 100% chance little Johnny ain’t gonna make it past the 90 day mark.
Yet another person rattled off some nonsense about how could abortion be made illegal and what should the consequences be? Well thats an easy one princess, 50 lashes in the town square and 20 years in prison aughta do it. Just watch how fast women suddenly are ready for a family.
Since everybody here was a zygote, fetus, what have you, it’s real easy to figure out who wasn’t aborted. You wanna put a bullet in your own brain knock youselves out. You kill someone else, well thats murder. Now go out and murder and support all your murderous sista’s.
Oh NWO.
Not only was I not aborted, I was also not miscarried, and not-not-conceived in the first place. I know we’ve done this before, but the idea of an abortion where the fetus suffers bothers me somewhat. The idea of an abortion where the fetus isn’t aware enough to suffer, but merely doesn’t exist when it could–bothers me no more morally than simply using birth control in the first place.
Also, the lashes thing is just… fetishistic. That’s not even a punishment, is it? That’s to get your dick hard.
@Captain Bathrobe:
Again, I see your point, though you are focusing on first-time/naive parents. Honestly, its not the main point for me, as I mentioned earlier. The main point is use conception if you don’t want kids. Also, though, I haven’t seen stats on the matter, and if you’ve seen some, I’d like to see them as well. If not, I guess we’re stuck as two chums disagreeing. *shrug*
So, NWO (and I realize I’m following you way off the deep end here), should the punishment for a “male abortion” be fifty lashes and twenty years?
It’s okay to answer “nah, dudes getting lashed doesn’t do it for me.” I assume that’s the answer.
At least MRAL, sort of believes in equality, even if he’s all messed up about how we’d get there. You’re just vicious.
So, just to clarify NWO, you believe that abortion is murder and should be illegal? In fact you believe that not being financially ready for a child is a frivolous reason to have an abortion.
Which means you also believe that rulings on Child Support should be strictly enforced, that men should not have an option for a “paper abortion”, and that tax payers should be willing to support children who live at our below the poverty line?
Right?
@NWO:
“Gee I don’t feel like working. I guess I’ll just wack someone out and take their money, since I’m not financially ready to support myself. Whats the difference? None.”
Actually, said fetus has no money you can take, so their is a world of difference between reality and your very poorly constructed metaphor.
“Of course on the flip side theres about a 100% chance little Johnny ain’t gonna make it past the 90 day mark. ”
Little Johnny ain’t little Johnny until some very fuzzy boundary almost assuredly long after 90 days.
“Yet another person rattled off some nonsense about how could abortion be made illegal and what should the consequences be? Well thats an easy one princess, 50 lashes in the town square and 20 years in prison aughta do it.”
Yeah, Holly’s got this one nailed down, put into SM gear, and not given a safe word… yeah…
“Since everybody here was a zygote, fetus, what have you, it’s real easy to figure out who wasn’t aborted. You wanna put a bullet in your own brain knock youselves out. You kill someone else, well thats murder.”
Guess what? When all of us were a zygote and a fetus, we weren’t us! We did not exist until that fuzzy boundary I mentioned earlier. Therefore? Not murder, and nothing like braining ourselves as we are now. The issue is not a simple one, and bombastically shouting about how it really is simple and a little clump of cells sticking to some other cells is identical to a fully living, breathing, thinking person is simply terrible.
NWOslave a zygote is not a person. There is no capacity for thought without a brain. Believing that thought can occur without the organs necessary for thought is a result of irrational thought processes, and quite likely thought processes mired in religious thinking. It is certainly your right to hold irrational beliefs including religious ones, but there it is never acceptable to pass laws in order to use the powers of the state to enforce religious dictates on anyone.
Alex, thanks for sharing your story here. It was brave of you and I know these things can be difficult. *hugs*
Slavie, you are such an idiot.
A fetus isn’t a baby, anymore then an unfertilized egg is a baby, or a mass of ejaculate is a baby. It’s all just potential genetic material! (Though, it’s all alive, too.)
And 20 years in jail is an absurd punishment for that so-called crime. How do you even prove it wasn’t a miscarriage? And why should we force anyone be “ready” for a family that isn’t? I’m mystified as to why that’s a good thing.